From autobiography written by John (aka James, "Matt") Harbin. It was published in 1897 in the San Francisco ExaminerRemarkable autobiography of the man who led the first emigrant train over the Sierra, and who was the first of California’s millionaires. Weary of the world, he crept into the solitudes of Mexico and for twenty years led the life of a hermit, leaving his retreat only because death seemed near.

THE KING OF THE MOUNTAINI suppose I ought to hate the world, but I don’t. It has kicked and cuffed me; it has put its hand in my pocket and stolen all it found there; it has lied to me; it has led me into pitfalls and laughed when I fell; it has ground my heart and racked my brain. But I can’t hate. I distrust.Twenty years ago, tired of dealing with insincerity, I crept away from it all and turned my face to Nature’s. The twenty years I’ve passed since then, my home in a lonely cave, my friends the stars and the winds and the birds and the honest earth, have been calm and happy. If the end were not near I’d be there yet. I did not leave because my heart has changed its leaning. I still distrust. But I’d rather die with my girl beside me than alone in the wilderness.Californians know me as Mat Harbin, but my name is John Madison Harbin. (The sketch is identified as James Madison, which is how he appears in everything else. The signature is simply ‘J.M.’) I was born in Warren County, Tennessee, in 1823, and am of English-Scotch descent. In 1839 I left Tennessee and went to Independence, Jackson county, MO. A might good old State, Missouri, and I think of it with a warming of my chilled affection. When I was fourteen I became acquainted with Dr. John Mark, a fur-trader. He told me of California, and my fancy was caught by the pictures he drew of the soft, sunny winters. I hadn’t much poetry in me, but I had a heap of fond-ness for the sunshine; so I thought and thought about the flowery places out there in the warmth, with fleecy clouds drifting over them, and at last I made up my mind to get there if I could. I tried to find some one willing to g o with me, but the trying was hard and the finding long put off. Not until 1844 was I able to make a start. Then I fell in with a party of Irish people who took to the notion with which my heart was filled. We were set upon by our friends, who argued that we couldn’t push through to the ocean, and some declared that we couldn’t make it with a body of 200 armed men, much less unattended. But we were not discouraged. I didn’t fear. In fact, I have never been afraid of anything short of God, and I reckon a fellow hasn’t anything to fear from him as long as he keeps in the middle of the road.We started for the West May 4, 1844, and trailed the sunset for six months. We had eleven wagons loaded with bacon and flour and drawn by oxen. I was the guide.When we got to the head of Humboldt river I left the party and struck off alone to find a path through the mountains. I found what I was looking for, and we crossed two miles north of the present line of the Central Pacific. In my search for a pass I discovered Donner Lake and named it Little Truckee. I also got a glimpse of Lake Tahoe, which I called Big Truckee. To Truckee river I gave the name which still clings to it. I had with me at the time an Indian whose name was Truckee, and the name seemed good enough for lakes and rivers. Very beautiful those bodies of water were out there in the unbroken wilderness. Maybe the Almighty could improve on them, but he’d have to do it to convince me.While hunting for the pass my appetite continued good, but my group didn’t continue. Two days before I found a way over the Sierra my supplies were gone. I buckled my stomach to a smaller compass and moved along hour after hour, thinking of all the dishes I liked and of all the spreads I had enjoyed, but seeing nothing worth mentioning except scenery. After going without food for two days, I shot a coyote. It all depends on the cooking and the length of time you’ve been living on the sublimity of towering trees and dizzy chasms. To me that coyote tasted pretty darned good, and now, after the lapse of more than fifty years, the memory of him is green. Here’s looking toward him.Our party reached Summit valley the latter part of September. There were about eighteen inches of snow on the ground then. The bacon gave out, but we took naturally to beef. Killed an ox every now and then and had him roasted, boiled and fried. At Donner lake we built a cabin and stored provisions. We weren’t sure we could make our way down the mountains, and we had a prejudice against dying in the snow, so we planned to have a retreat open in case of need. Joe Foster and Dennis Martin were left at the cabin. They remained in camp until February and then went on ox-hide snowshoes down the Sierra. They succeeded in getting to Sutter’s Fort. In the cabin we built as a retreat some members of the Donner party afterward perished. After leaving the two men at the lake, the rest of us journeyed forward until we got to the Yuba. There, the snow having become very deep, we left the wagons. Three families also remained. Aunt Mary Murphy was among the number in the second camp. All the others resumed the march and reached Sutter’s Fort. General Sutter provided us with mules and we started back to rescue the waiting few on the Yuba. But the snow was too much for us at first, and had to halt until a crust formed. Then we pushed on to the camp. We found Aunt Mary parching bullock hide for food and taking care of her three weeks old baby, Aunt Mary had some of the real grit in her. She was as one among ten thousand. All of the party had gathered at Sutter’s Fort before December except the men left at Donner lake. Ours was the first emigrant train that ever got their wagons across the Sierra.I went into special service under Micheltorena, who was first in command of Mexican soldiers in California. I stayed with him four months and then went down the coast to Los Angeles on an exploring expedition. Then I returned to Sutter’s Fort and with a few friends crossed the San Joaquin river. Where Stockton is we killed about 250 elk. The San Joaquin valley I explored to Tulare lake and there made for the mountains and on to the Ventura region. There I discovered gold in gravel. That was in 1845. Hurrying on to Los Angeles, I purchased some iron and made a Georgia rocker. Then returning I took out several hundred dollars worth of gold. The water gave out and I struck into the Sierras in Mariposa county. The Indians drove me back and I went to Old Horn, an Indian chief who lived on Kern river, 200 years from its mouth. He received me kindly and I remained with him four months.On bidding good-by to Old Horn I journeyed 150 miles south of San Diego and discovered three copper mines. To get titles to them I started north to have a talk with Pio Pico, and found the Bear Flag War under way. For two months I was in hiding at a ranch just below San Bernardino. The war with Mexico soon followed, and I joined the American forces in 1846 under Commodore Stockton and was with the army until peace was established. I commanded the soldiers at the Battle of Chino, forty miles east of Los Angeles, in September, 1846. The fighting lasted two days. The second day a bullet grazed my left ear, and the last ball fired nipped the middle finger of my left hand, leaving it a wreck. I put up a pretty game fight, I reckon, but I was taken prisoner and put in the next five months as a captive in Los Angeles. I had a fever then, and twice they carried me out on a hand -barrow so that I might die in the open. It seems needless to observe that I didn’t die.While I was in prison my mother and her family arrived in California and settled in Napa county. This moved me to what really was heroic effort, my temperament considered: I wrote my mother the first letter of my life. When she read it she and my young brother held a council of war, and my brother shouldered a gun and started for the front, intent on rescuing me from the Mexicans. To this end he joined the forces of Fremont. Good stuff in that brother of mine, even though he didn't get me out. Well, I got out, nevertheless, for the war ended as all things end, barring trouble and star dust, and when the end came I was honorably discharged from service, General Fremont signing my discharge in the Bell Building, Los Angeles, about March or April 1847.Soon after I was mustered out I returned north, taking with me 4,650 head of as fine cattle as ever trod the earth, and 700 horses. Of the horses we shall say nothing, please, in this day of the thoroughbred; but there were 700. I concluded it was high time for me to settle down and behave myself, so I bought the Thomas Hardy Mexican land grant at Woodland. It touched the Sacramento river and measured about seventeen miles in length by four miles in width. It was something of a bit of land. The site of Woodland is within the limits of the grant. I had more than that, though, but title to the rest of my ranch I derived directly from the United States. I put in the time from then till 1858 raising cattle and thinking. The herds I had to sell were disposed of to the miners and Sacramento butchers, and I cleaned up $100,000.00 to $150,000.00 a year. Frequently a fat ox brought me in $800.00. I wasn’t backward about pushing my way where the snow lay deep in the winter, and beef was as good as gold if a fellow could get it to the miners when the world was white.In 1848 I built for others the first Georgia rocker at Mormon island and two at Coloma, just below the old Sutter sawmill. I got $1.00 of every five taken out with the aid of the rockers. During 1848, too, I took a short turn at mining on my own account, and my dust was worth $4,000.00.Sarah Adams and I liked each other. Then we liked a little better. Then we loved. Then we married. The marriage was in 1850, and death came to Sarah in 1863. My love lives on, and should, for I have found little in this world worth clinging to save the memory of that good woman.It is a distinction I do not value, but I may as well mention it, now that I am writing of other things: I was the first of the California millionaires. In 1853 my wealth aggregated $3,000,000.00. I didn’t let it bother me.About this time the tide turned and I began to be buffeted by fortune. The Mormons were mixed up in the first blows it gave me. The Mormons were being persecuted, and I reckoned I could help them. I wasn’t a Mormon, and you couldn’t make me one in a thousand years; but I was a man, and they were of my kind, and I felt sorry for them. I couldn’t figure out that they meant any harm, and I could figure out that they were having might hard traveling. So I set to work to do them a good turn, and ended by accomplishing nothing for them a bumping my own head against rocks. I bought the Mosquito Kingdown in Central America and planned to fix it up for the Mormons. I paid $100,000.00 down, and was to pay the remainder of the purchase price within ten years. I supposed I could meet the payments with the increase of my herds.I started for Utah, expecting to be absent two months, and requiring a little pocked-money I borrowed $45,000.00 from Jim Haggin and Lloyd Tevis, giving them a mortgage on all my property, the note running for three months. I supposed I had arranged sufficiently to have my business attended to right up to the line during my absence, and thought my agent would look after the note should I not be back on the minute. I shouldn’t have supposed any such things, for the suppositions were wrong. I trotted about for nine months, and didn’t tell anybody at home where I was trotting or why. They lost track of me, it seems and the report gained acceptance that I was dead. The note fell due, wasn’t raised, and was sued on. The mortgage was foreclosed, my property fell to Haggin and Tevis, and I got home in time to be of no use at all.I fiddled, faddled, feedled a bit, but I couldn’t raise money enough to redeem the property, and I couldn’t raise a bean on my kingdom. I was the only man on earth who believed in it, I reckon, and I’m not saying I believed all the time, myself. When I saw that I was downed for good so far as my ranch was concerned I chalked that up as an experience and moved over to Virginia City and began again. This time I engaged in the business of supplying lumber to Virginia City and Gold Hill. In six years I was $150,000.00 ahead of the game, but the money was slippery and I couldn’t hold it. It got away and stayed there. Then I went in for oil. I remembered having seen traces of petroleum in Southern California in 1845, and I journeyed to the region and began prospecting. In 1864, that was. I found signs, and wrote to a friend to come down and bring $11,000.00 with him. He did so. We sunk the eleven thousand so deep no man will ever find it. He and I were sleeping in the same room in old Pat Dunn’s hotel at San Luis Obispo the night President Lincoln was shot.From ‘65 to ‘71 I followed the lumber business on Cobb mountain, Lake county, working more than was good for me and making some money. Then I saw the glimmer of gold, and off I sped. Gold - I mean the virgin gold the mind pictures shinning from sands no foot has trod, gleaming from quartz no had has touched is a beautiful temptress floating on before, beckoning, beckoning, and laughing with promise. When some men catch the outline of her shimmering form they drop everything and follow. Well, I was in those days unable to plod when this fairy beckoned. I hurried to Mexico and put my savings into four abandoned mines in Durango--Vaca, St. Marcus, Socorra and Cabdilla. They were in a group, and had not been worked since 1850. I soon found I hadn’t money enough to get out the pay ore I knew to be there, so I wrote old Fred Warner, the Sacramento butcher, how things stood, and told him he could have the mines if he’d work them, giving me four shares of stock in return for the gift. Fred put in $100,000.00 and in a short time the mines were paying $30,000.00 a month. This they continued to do for several years. As soon as the development began I trailed off among the mountains to await the inflow of the tide, leaving my traps behind me. I lofted around a bit too long, considering the make-up of my good brother’s men, for when I returned I found that some of them had broken into my trunk and taken thence my four shares of stock. I never saw those shares again. Having still some trustfulness as a mark for the arrows of outrageous fortune, I felt somewhat pained; but I took it for granted the company - Warner had taken in some others - would readily reissue the stolen shares. There aren’t many things a body should take for granted except the law of gravitation and human selfishness. I shouldn’t have taken that thing for granted. Warner was willing, but the others weren’t, and I saw clearly enough that I’d have to face a heap of wrangling to get my rights. There isn't a mine worth the wear and tear of wrangling. I made up my mind that I’d leave those four shares stand over for adjudication when Gabriel calls us all into court, and I figured out that I’d go it alone. Profoundly disgusted by my dealings with men, I determined to turn to nature. As I said in the beginning, I didn’t hate; I distrusted. Hate is a fierce fire that consumes, the heart which yields it, and I hadn’t any grudge against myself.Off into a wilderness, eighty miles up among the mountains, I traveled - three days of hard riding from the nearest settlement. When I could look the earth in the face and not see man’s image there, I halted. On the bank of a pleasant creek I made my home. A mighty rock jutted from the mountain-side hard by the stream, and in a hollow of its hospitable face I rested for twenty golden years.Ultimately I enclosed this hollow, building three walls of stones cemented by adobe. The roof, so far as it projected from the great rock, was of adobe tiles. When I had the walls about four feet high I sprained by back lifting a too-heavy stone. That put an end to building operations for many months. After a time some Mexicans who were wandering through the mountains helped me to complete the walls and roof the enclosure. This enclosure I dived into three rooms, in one of which I built a huge fireplace. I never made an oven and I never had a stove in all those years. My cooking was done in this fireplace. For a few years I had several cooking utensils, but one day those were stolen. I venture to say there is no fastness wild enough to give pause to the thievish instincts of men. If there is, sure it is that I have never found it. It may be that our notions of property are at variance with natural law. By degrees I replaced the utensil, bringing home something necessary when I returned from the settlement, whither I journeyed once or twice a year. Not precisely that, either; bringing something I could use is better. After all, the things which are necessary are so few a body could write them on a square inch of paper. The excesses imposed by what we call civilization are so many that they burden the earth.I had a rifle, a shotgun, plenty of ammunition, some blankets and a bit of steel. In the mountains I found a piece of flint. I had no matches, nor wanted any. With my steel and flint I kindled all the fire I required during my solitary life for those decades. I had no candles, no kerosene, nor wanted any. Pitch-pine torches served me well enough.When the sun was yet below the crest of the mountains and the dawn was grey I took a gun and went into the forest, bringing home game enough to make my table glad. No king had better, I reckon, and there was no sauce of bitterness. Along the streams and in the glades I found vegetables to my looking and those things I couldn’t find I raised to the extent I cared for them, getting seeds originally at the settlement. When I felt lonely I turned to the stars or the flowers or the waters and was comforted. There’s a heap of company to a star if you know how to get on speaking terms with it, and the brooks tell stories, and the flowers are full of history, and the birds are honest friends.The first ten years I kept tally on the big game I killed. I had 2,600 deer and sixty-five black bear on the list when I threw up the job of keeping account of my hunting. The bear skins and deer hams were salable, and I exchanged then at the settlement for such articles as I needed or fancied I’d like to have. The woods were full of deer, bears and wild turkeys, and I could tell a story or two worth hearing of some of my experience as hunter and trapper.I’m not giving to bragging, for I don’t care a row of pins what is thought of me or whether I’m thought of at all or no. I say this as a lead to the claim that no man on earth knows more about cooking game then I know. I have experimented and studied. The combinations and methods I have tried are so many that volumes would be required to list them. And as a result of it all I say that not one cook in one thousand understands the art of getting out of meat the best that is in it. Why, the juices of meat are more precious than pearls, and who among you know how to save the glory of them for the palate and their best value for the blood.The last seven years of my stay in the wilderness I was more or less infirm. A stroke of paralysis found me one day, while I was clambering over the rocks, and I wasn’t good for much after that. For six months I lay besides my fireplace, keeping as close to the blaze as I could without burning. A young Mexican cared for me. He put in a heap of time rubbing my paralyzed left side with bear oil. Then I began to feel better, and could move about a little. No doctor could have done so much for me as that heat and bear oil did. Well, let me add a word for my will. Will is a tremendous power. I bear testimony out of an experience few men have equaled in my generation. I made up my mind to beat that paralysis, and I pinned my faith to the heat and oil. The will had a great deal to do with pulling me through.After that I found it hard to hunt, for it was not easy as it had been to climb here and there among the mountains in search of game. Often I fell and hurt myself. Old age was coming on, too, and there came times when even my strong will failed to gain response from the shattered army of muscles it commanded.Three times within those seven years the Mexican - there had come to be a few of them among the mountains since I settled there - concluded I was so near the end that they had better be prepared; and three times, accordingly, they brought a carpenter to the place and had a box made for me. I was so weak that I couldn’t speak or move, but I could hear the saw and hammer, and I made a strong drive with my will to beat the Mexicans out of a funeral. I lived to use those boxes for kindling wood.Still, I realized I was on the down grade and might lose control of the brake almost any moment, and I began to think of going back to California. I had a daughter there and there was a warmth in my heart for her, and somehow I didn’t like to die out there in the wilds with my girl so far away. I thought I’d like to have her hand in mine when I crossed the great divide. Besides, I had an ambition to fool that carpenter.But I couldn’t face California a pauper. I didn’t want to be a penniless in a land where I had been prosperous. Pride, I suppose. Well, pride, I take it, is about the strongest passion we have. I never felt like getting along with less of it that I found on hand. It pulls something in your heart at times, but it gives firmness to your step and strength to your eye.So I concluded I’d try to acquire title to some of the valuable lands about me, for I didn’t own even the site of my home. The woods abounded in acorns and I set to work raising hogs, my plan being to sell pork to the miners. I made a little money this way and was about to make more when along came another wave of misfortune. I had a drove of six hundred porkers, a dry spell struck the region. Every hog died. The I took the little money I had accumulated and determined to buy with it as much land as it would exchange for. I trusted the commission to a Mexican official, being feeble too attend it myself. Of course he embezzled the money. I never saw him again.Realizing that I could not reach independence soon enough by the first route planned, I made up my mind to apply to the United States for the pension to which I was entitled for my service in the army of Fremont. That way, I knew, I could secure enough income for my simple wants and could return to California without forfeiture of self-respect. I applied, but soon ran into a snag. I had to have two witnesses to prove myself the Matt Harbin who was of the Pathfinder’s forces. No one in Mexico could supply the proof. I had therefore to turn to California.I wrote my daughter, who was in Fresno county, and she supplied me a railway ticket. When it arrived I took a long look at the old place. I knew I should never see it again, and it was dear to me. Then I mounted a horse and rode away, not looking back. I was afraid to look back. I reckoned the great rock might draw me to it if I gave it half a chance.A Mexican rode with me to Durango, a six-days’ journey. I was too weak to go alone.When the train pulled into Toreon I got off to get something to eat and there I lost my ticket. After leaving Toreon the conductor made his rounds, and as I could not produce the ticket he put me off the train. That night I slept in my blanket beside the track. Next day I journeyed back to Toreon, and after a delay of twelve days the American Consul procured for me a second ticket. He helped me pay for a room in which to sleep while I was waiting. I reached Fresno without further mishap, and taking the stage to Pine Ridge was soon with my child and her family and could find nothing in my appearance with which she was familiar except this withered finger some meddling Mexican plunked at the battle of Chino.Here I am content to spend the few remaining years. I have sounded the deeps and shallows of fortune, and I look out upon the world with something of sadness and nothing of fear or anger. It has not used me well, but then it’s such a crude world yet, and I reckon it doesn’t know any better.J.M. Harbin, Pine Ridge, June 20. (1897)

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